System Update - Glenn Greenwald - CNN's Jake Tapper Invited an Israeli to Explain that Iranians Love the War: Classic Neocon Tactic
Aired: 2026-03-10
Duration: 29:08


=== Crude American War Propaganda (14:19) ===

[00:00:08]  War propaganda is something that I have extensively covered in my career as a journalist.
[00:00:14]  And I know in the abstract that it is filled with deceit, that there's really no limits on what will be said or the tactics that will be used, that their shamelessness that drives war propaganda is almost impossible to fathom.
[00:00:28]  And even though I've worked on it for a long time and I've talked about war propaganda for a long time, I have to say, I'm not just disgusted, but a little bit surprised at just how crude and degraded American war propaganda is when it comes to this new war in Iran.
[00:00:44]  And I was thinking that maybe the reason for it is that although we've had war propaganda recently, including the drive to have the United States finance and arm the Ukrainians and their war with Russia, and even to some minor extent, bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela and then invading Venezuela to abduct its leader, Nicolas Maduro, bombing Yemen, things like that, covert operations.
[00:01:09]  We haven't had a full-on major new war that the United States started in this case with Israel in quite a while, where the president just ordered a new war.
[00:01:21]  Obama did with Libya and Syria.
[00:01:24]  George W. Bush did it with Iraq and Afghanistan.
[00:01:27]  But this is really a major new war.
[00:01:29]  And so it's possible that because it's been a while since I've actually lived through the kind of tsunami of insultingly deceitful propaganda that washes over the American population whenever that happens, that I just don't, maybe I just have become a little bit inured to it or just had forgotten just how extreme it is.
[00:01:51]  But I want to show you an incident that really illustrates just how shameless it all is.
[00:01:58]  Yesterday, Jake Tapper, who is the host of a CNN program and has been for quite a while, and he's also a longtime hardcore, lifelong fanatical defender of Israel.
[00:02:10]  He's Jewish.
[00:02:11]  He grew up in a Jewish community that taught him to love and revere Israel.
[00:02:16]  And he is fairly open about the fact, as is Dana Bash, who's in a similar situation on CNN, as is Wolf Blitzer, who actually worked for AIPAC, that they have this natural Natural reflexive defense toward Israel.
[00:02:27]  It doesn't mean they don't criticize the Netanyahu government.
[00:02:29]  Occasionally, they'll ask questions to keep up appearances that are critical of what the Israelis are saying.
[00:02:34]  But by and large, they're very open about the fact they really deal with and instinctively support Israel.
[00:02:43]  And you're really seeing this in the Iran coverage.
[00:02:46]  You certainly saw it with the US, the Israeli attack on Gaza that was funded by the U.S., but you're seeing it even more so now because this is the war that the Israelis have really wanted most for a long time to lure the United States into to go take care of their most formidable adversary in that region.
[00:03:04]  So, Jake Tapper does a show on the war, and he specifically wants to focus on how Iranians in Iran are feeling about all the bombs falling on their heads and incinerating their cities and poisoning their air and jeopardizing their water supply and exploding their schools because who wouldn't love that?
[00:03:24]  I mean, that's obviously something that they would be really grateful and happy about.
[00:03:27]  And so, in order to demonstrate that to his audience, that don't worry about all this carnage you're seeing.
[00:03:33]  Iranians in Iran, the majority of them are grateful and thrilled that we're doing this.
[00:03:39]  He decided to call on not an Iranian citizen living in Iran, not a local politician who actually was elected to speak for at least their community, or some various Iranians, a selective mix in the diaspora, one who was for it, one who's against it.
[00:03:57]  No, he decided to call an Israeli woman, a pro-Israel activist, an Israeli activist.
[00:04:05]  She's actually born in Seattle, so she got American citizenship, but then she made her little pilgrimage to Israel where she now lives.
[00:04:13]  And she is married to a former IDF soldier.
[00:04:19]  And she is just basically a hardcore, not just pro-Israel activist living in Israel, but she's also somebody who has campaigned previously for joint campaigns with things like Israel's notorious unit, the spy unit 8200,
[00:04:34]  which is the spy unit for which Barack Raviv, Rabak Raviv, the star journalist of Axios, who just materialized out of the blue after October 7th to become our most influential reporter to report on matters of Israel getting all sorts of little leaks from the Netanyahu government and the Biden government writing it down, now doing the same thing.
[00:04:55]  He's just Israeli.
[00:04:56]  He was in the IDF until 2024, the IDF reserves.
[00:04:59]  He was in the unit 8200 as well.
[00:05:03]  So this is who she is.
[00:05:04]  She lives in Israel.
[00:05:06]  She's a Jewish Israeli woman.
[00:05:09]  And Jake Tapper had her on to ask her how Iranians in Iran are thinking and feeling about the war.
[00:05:21]  Obviously, you know what she's going to say.
[00:05:24]  She's obviously going to say, Oh, Iranians are so grateful for Netanyahu and Trump.
[00:05:29]  They love this war so much.
[00:05:32]  But how can you be a journalist and want to tell your audience what Iranians in Iran are thinking, the majority of them, or a huge chunk of them, and not invite an Iranian inside Iran on to speak for them, but to invite an Israeli woman in Israel who's a pro-Israel activist to speak for them?
[00:05:47]  And yet, that's exactly what Jake Tapper did to very predictable results.
[00:05:52]  Here's that segment from yesterday: Iranians on the ground about the strikes and about Iranian leadership going forward.
[00:06:00]  How do the Iranians you're talking to, how do they see the future unfolding in Iran?
[00:06:05]  Now, just the question alone is so journalistically corrupted.
[00:06:13]  Do you think that people who are in Iran in the middle of this war who are speaking to this woman who's over in Israel, who's an Israeli Jew in Israel?
[00:06:21]  Do you think, who's a pro-Israel activist, do you think the people in Iran who she claims she's speaking with are remotely representative of the Iranian people on whose behalf she's not on whose behalf she's now purporting to speak?
[00:06:36]  I mean, to ask the question is to answer it, but that's exactly what Jake Tapper presumed when inviting her on and then asking that question.
[00:06:41]  And here's the shocking and surprising answer that you'll never guess that she went on to give.
[00:06:48]  Of course, there's a lot of uncertainty and there's a lot of problems with the internet still being shut off, although there is some limited use with Starlink and limited other options.
[00:06:56]  But by and large, the responses from Iranians that I've spoken to has been overwhelmingly in favor of the United States and Israeli action.
[00:07:06]  Oh my God, overwhelmingly in favor.
[00:07:09]  She's shocked to learn that the Iranians with whom she spoke are overwhelmingly in favor of Israel and the United States and the military action they're taking in their country.
[00:07:19]  The ground, they're very happy that regime targets many of them, the centers of suppression of the Iranian people, many of these besieged IRGC bases and forces are in fact being targeted.
[00:07:31]  So they're happy about that.
[00:07:32]  The main complaint that I'm hearing right now on the ground is that they're witnessing, personally, witnessing IRGC.
[00:07:39]  Okay, so they're they're they're they're happy.
[00:07:42]  Presumably, among the people she spoke to, the Iranians were not the parents of the 175 schoolgirls that the United States eviscerated on the first day with the Tamaha missile that blew up their elementary school.
[00:07:52]  Presumably, that's not, those aren't among the people with whom she spoke.
[00:07:57]  She is, though, willing to say that while Iranians are in general, the ones she spoke with, very happy about these bombs that are dropping, the fact that their cities are on fire, that the oil refineries are being blown up, that it's polluting their air, that desalinization tanks have been destroyed, which provides them fresh water.
[00:08:15]  They're very happy about all of that.
[00:08:16]  There are things, though, that they're a little bit upset by.
[00:08:19]  It's not a fully happy picture.
[00:08:20]  There are things and people with whom they're upset.
[00:08:23]  Who might that be?
[00:08:23]  Israelis or the Americans?
[00:08:25]  Let's hear.
[00:08:26]  Complaint that I'm hearing right now on the ground is that they're witnessing, personally, witnessing IRGC troops moving into schools and mosques.
[00:08:35]  I've received a plethora of photos from Iranians on the ground of exactly that, moving both the force, the manpower, and weapons and equipment into school areas.
[00:08:45]  So this is something very concerning.
[00:08:46]  It's not new.
[00:08:47]  Didn't she just say that the internet was cut off in Iran?
[00:08:51]  And yet, amazingly, the people with whom she's speaking in Iran, who are extremely happy with this, were able to send her pictures of the Iranian troops who are going into schools and mosques.
[00:09:04]  And that's what they're upset about.
[00:09:05]  Amazing that those people happen to have internet, very good internet to send those photos.
[00:09:09]  They're able to just go take the photos of on the streets of Tehran of the ICGR, the Iranian government troops and the like going into mosques.
[00:09:22]  And schools are just there taking pictures and then they run away and they send it to Emily in Israel so that she can tell CNN about it.
[00:09:29]  Also note too that she's Israeli.
[00:09:32]  So of course she's going to say, yeah, we are blowing up schools and mosques or whatever, but it's because Hamas, Hamas is inside of it, but the Iranian troops are just the new version of that claim.
[00:09:45]  I mean, this is so crude.
[00:09:48]  This is so disgusting to even have her on in this capacity to speak for Iranians.
[00:09:53]  I'm not here to speak for Iranians.
[00:09:55]  I don't claim I know what the majority of Iranians think.
[00:09:57]  I don't know if they hate their government, the majority.
[00:10:00]  Maybe they do.
[00:10:02]  I mean, they could.
[00:10:03]  The majority of people in their country hate a lot of a lot of countries hate their leaders.
[00:10:08]  That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that they want the Israelis and Americans to come bomb the shit out of their country, destroy their civilian infrastructure, their governmental infrastructure, and then pick and choose their new leaders and then prop them up.
[00:10:21]  Going from they hate their government to that they love the war is a gigantic leap.
[00:10:28]  But this Israeli woman is not in a position to speak about anything in terms of what the majority of 96 million Iranians in that country think.
[00:10:36]  And yet Jake Tapper had his pro-Israel activist colleague on to do exactly that.
[00:10:44]  It is a tactic of the Islamic regime and their proxy forces, but it's definitely concerning for the future.
[00:10:49]  And of course, there is some questioning about what President Trump does intend for the leadership.
[00:10:55]  The united call from the Iranian people on the ground is that they want the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to lead a transition government.
[00:11:03]  Okay, if you don't stop the interview right there, she said the united call for Iranians on the ground, the 96 million people who apparently she was elected to represent and be the spokesperson for, she told the CNN audience and her fellow pro-Israel activist Jake Tapper that the majority of Iranians want the Shah's son to come and rule the country.
[00:11:26]  She has zero basis for even if they hate their government, even if they hate the religious figures who have been governing Iran, even if they have burning desires for freedom.
[00:11:42]  Not only doesn't that translate into we want the U.S. and Israel to come bomb the shit out of our country, it definitely doesn't translate into we want the Shah's son to come back and rule us.
[00:11:51]  There was a revolution in Iran by Iranians against the Shah's regime in 1979.
[00:11:56]  They overthrew him because they hated him because he was so savagely tyrannical and was a puppet of the U.S. and Israel.
[00:12:02]  Who is this Israeli woman to go on CNN and say unquestioned the majority or no, not even the majority in unison Iranians want the Shah's son to come back and rule them?
[00:12:11]  And after that, go to a national referendum.
[00:12:14]  Well, they will choose the system of government, but it's not clear yet where Trump stands on that issue.
[00:12:19]  And we heard it in his press conference as well.
[00:12:21]  He prefers someone inside.
[00:12:23]  The problem is it isn't Venezuela.
[00:12:25]  It's not the same system.
[00:12:26]  And you have to deconstruct that system, the IRGC, in order to have genuine change and stability.
[00:12:33]  I mean, of course, an Israeli woman who's a pro-Israel activist who works with the unit 8200 is going to say that you have to completely obliterate and destroy and dismantle the Iranian government.
[00:12:44]  She's speaking for Israelis and for Israel first loyalists in the United States, not for Iranians.
[00:12:50]  I'm sure there are some Iranians who agree with her.
[00:12:52]  Like, yeah, you know, but this is exactly what we were told about Iraq.
[00:12:56]  And it turned out to be a complete lie, which is why the United States got entrapped there because we weren't welcomed as liberators.
[00:13:02]  The majority of people didn't want us there.
[00:13:06]  And if you get an Iranian inside Iran to say it, I'm still going to question it.
[00:13:09]  How do they know?
[00:13:10]  It's like, if you want to get an idea of what the majority of 350 million Americans speak, do you put on Tom Cotton or do you put on AOC?
[00:13:18]  Oh, look, we have an American in the United States here to tell us what Americans think.
[00:13:22]  Obviously, you can manipulate that outcome any way you want.
[00:13:24]  It would be a totally unreliable anecdotal way of assessing the situation.
[00:13:28]  But to not even have an Iranian in Iran in or an Iranian at all, but an Israeli woman coming on to tell you what the people in unison in Iran want.
[00:13:38]  I mean, I don't even think Netanyahu's government would do that.
[00:13:41]  It would be propaganda, too brazen.
[00:13:43]  Yet Jake Tapper is certainly willing to, obviously.
[00:13:46]  Now, just to give you a sense of a little bit more of who this woman is, there you see how she self-identifies on her ex page with her name in Hebrew.
[00:13:54]  Nice little blonde lady, probably from a bottle, certainly white.
[00:14:00]  She's in Israel.
[00:14:02]  You see her there in yellow.
[00:14:04]  That's where she is.
[00:14:04]  And that's where the dot on Twitter indicates the on X indicates that she's from.
[00:14:10]  She's the founder of the Iran-Israel Alliance, though.
[00:14:13]  So I'm sure she has the interest, the best interest of Iranians at heart.
[00:14:19]  Now, speaking of Iraq, it is amazing how a lot of people have been trained to say, don't show me any parallels with Iraq.

=== Paul Wolfowitz's Propaganda (08:13) ===

[00:14:27]  Iraq is not Iran.
[00:14:30]  And the statement, Iraq is not Iran, is both simultaneously self-evident, but completely irrelevant to the learning of history.
[00:14:41]  If you don't point out differences that are relevant to the point being made, it's like saying, red is not blue.
[00:14:47]  Oh my God, congratulations on that important insight.
[00:14:49]  Does it have any relevance to what we're discussing?
[00:14:52]  The number two is not the number five.
[00:14:54]  Oh, that's very true.
[00:14:56]  Iran is not Iraq.
[00:14:57]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:14:57]  It's not.
[00:14:58]  They're definitely two different countries.
[00:14:59]  That's why they have two different names.
[00:15:00]  What is different about them that renders what was done and said about Iraq before that war irrelevant to what was done and said about the war in Iran?
[00:15:09]  The ways that the American government lies, that the Israelis lie, the propaganda that they present that is baseless and turns out to be false.
[00:15:18]  These things are identical.
[00:15:20]  See for yourself.
[00:15:20]  Here's Paul Wolfowitz, who for those of you who are too young to have lived through the run-up to the Iraq war and don't know who Paul Wolfowitz is, be grateful, except I'm about to burst your blissful ignorance and show you who he is.
[00:15:34]  He's one of the supreme old school neocons.
[00:15:37]  He ended up as the deputy defense secretary under Dick Cheney.
[00:15:41]  He's a neocon Jewish Israel loyalist and one of the architects of the Iraq war.
[00:15:48]  And here he was speaking to the Senate in 2003, just a little bit before the U.S. invaded Iraq.
[00:15:59]  And I want you to listen to what he said and to listen not only to how similar or even identical it is to what this Emily woman said about Iranians and what they think, but the script is almost verbatim.
[00:16:10]  They don't even tinker with it.
[00:16:12]  This is a notorious clip, but I don't think a lot of people remember exactly how it was constructed and what it was that was said.
[00:16:19]  Here's Paul Wolfowitz assuring the U.S. Senate about how happy the Iraqis are going to be and why, like we're hearing about Iranians now, oh, Iran's not Iraq because Iran has really educated people in it and they can actually sustain a democracy, unlike these primitive Arabs who run around.
[00:16:34]  But at the time we were told, oh, no, Iraq is like the crown jewel of the Middle East.
[00:16:37]  They're the ones with the most sophisticated and educated population.
[00:16:41]  They are going to be particularly happy about what we do.
[00:16:43]  And we'll construct a beautiful democratic society that will spread freedom and peace everywhere.
[00:16:48]  Here's Paul Wolfowitz.
[00:16:50]  And these are almost all people who have families back in Baghdad.
[00:16:54]  One of them even told of getting a call from a friend of his who's a son of a minister in the Iraqi government.
[00:17:00]  They are just unanimous in their unanimous.
[00:17:06]  He's talking to Iraqis, including ones in Baghdad who have relatives who are in the government.
[00:17:11]  They are unanimous.
[00:17:11]  It's like Emily Schrader said, they're united in their happiness about the war and how they want the Shah back.
[00:17:17]  Here's Paul Wolfowitz saying, I don't know, just a few Iraqis who want us to go in there.
[00:17:22]  They're unanimous that we go and take out Saddam.
[00:17:25]  Unanimous.
[00:17:26]  They're in the Iraqi government.
[00:17:29]  They are just unanimous in their hope that we will help to liberate Iraq.
[00:17:35]  These are Arabs, 23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world who are going to welcome us as liberators.
[00:17:40]  And when that message gets people and what are they going to do?
[00:17:44]  23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world who are going to welcome us as liberators.
[00:17:49]  And when that message gets out to the whole Arab world, it is going to be powerful counter to Osama bin Laden.
[00:17:54]  The notion that we're going to earn more enemies by going in and getting rid of what every Arab knows is one of the worst tyrants and they have many governing them is just nonsense.
[00:18:05]  To the contrary, we'll have millions of people witnessing on our behalf and we will finally be able to stop bombing Iraq every day, which we've been doing for more or less the last 12 years.
[00:18:14]  It'll be a great step forward.
[00:18:17]  Such a great step forward.
[00:18:18]  Such a great, great step forward.
[00:18:21]  You know, it's just as deceitful to have Paul Wolfowitz, a Jewish American loyal to Israel, his whole life, go before Congress and testify under oath about what Iraqis want unanimously or even at all, as it is to put Emily Schrader on and say what Iranians are united in wanting and believing about this war.
[00:18:48]  But this is why I say the propaganda script doesn't change.
[00:18:51]  And if you want to say Iraq is not Iran, it's a meaningless statement.
[00:18:54]  You have to explain what the difference is that's relevant.
[00:18:56]  If you want to say, oh, Iranians are really smart and educated people, whereas the Arabs are dumb and primitive, which is a lot of what I'm hearing.
[00:19:02]  Paul Wolfowitz was saying exactly the opposite.
[00:19:03]  He was using exactly that point.
[00:19:05]  Oh, maybe in the rest of the Arab world, it wouldn't work, but the Iraqis are uniquely intelligent and educated.
[00:19:10]  And so they're going to love having our bombs fall on their head.
[00:19:13]  To me, it would seem like the opposite conclusion.
[00:19:17]  But, and it turned out the opposite conclusion was exactly right.
[00:19:20]  But isn't it amazing how the same people, same kinds of people, were making exactly the same claims to justify these two wars 23 years apart using the same baseless methodology?
[00:19:34]  Now, there was a poll taken today, and I want to say that this is not a poll that should be taken without skepticism or as the gospel, but it is a poll from a established organization, the National Iranian American Council, and they polled Iranian Americans, so the Iranian diaspora.
[00:20:01]  And they asked, what is your position regarding the United States initiating a war on Iran?
[00:20:05]  49.3% said that they were in favor.
[00:20:11]  I'm sorry, that they oppose.
[00:20:12]  48.9% said they support.
[00:20:15]  So basically, 50-50 split.
[00:20:19]  Now, again, I'm not presenting this as the gospel.
[00:20:21]  You can certainly question it or where it came from, but clearly there's a huge number of Iranians in the diaspora, never mind in Iran itself, who are opposed to this war, even if they hate their government.
[00:20:36]  We showed you a video yesterday of thousands of people going to Revolution Square in Tehran to commemorate the death of the Aytoll to commemorate the new leader who was appointed, which is his son, to protest the violence brought to their country by the U.S. and Israel.
[00:20:51]  A bunch of imbeciles, genuine imbeciles, bots, and activists spent all day on X trying to get a community noted, saying it was a fake video that was from years ago, a complete lie.
[00:21:02]  New York Times had photographers there.
[00:21:04]  They posted the photographs.
[00:21:06]  Every major media outlet's reporting it.
[00:21:08]  They just can't believe that there's a gathering of many thousands of Irians supporting the government.
[00:21:14]  Again, they're not representing the majority either, but they're certainly there.
[00:21:18]  Now, you see that poll.
[00:21:20]  And then here's polling data that I do think is very reliable because it's been substantiated by many different polls, which is who supports the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran?
[00:21:29]  This is from the Israeli public opinion is from the Israel Democracy Institute.
[00:21:37]  The data on Americans is from NPR and PBS News and the Maris poll, so very established polling services.
[00:21:46]  Americans, 36% approve of the war on Iran, 54% disapprove.
[00:21:51]  So a majority that disapproves.
[00:21:54]  Polls have continuously shown this.
[00:21:56]  But in Israel, overwhelmingly, Overwhelmingly, they support this war.
[00:22:00]  82% approve of the war, 13% oppose it.
[00:22:03]  Why wouldn't you, if you were Israeli, be in favor of having the United States go and destroy your adversary and then just being able to fly above the country things to the United States and drop bombs on them however and whenever you want?
[00:22:16]  And of course, people who are loyal to Israel, like Jake Shaper and Jake Tapper and Emily Schrader and Paul Wolfwills before them are going to support American wars, sending Americans to fight and die, never in their families, of course, to those wars to take out the people that Israel perceives as their adversaries, which is why it's so obscene to put someone like her on the television as though she's representative.

=== Propaganda Designed to Deceive (06:27) ===

[00:22:41]  Now, just to give you a little bit of sense, for those of you who don't remember, the idea that Iraqis were going to welcome us as liberators and that once we invaded, they had done so.
[00:22:49]  It wasn't just a prediction, it was a claim, was extremely widespread.
[00:22:53]  There was that iconography scene of Iraqis, we were told, who were tearing at the time, we were told it was Iraqis tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad that was used to make us believe that Iraqis were celebrating just like we were promised.
[00:23:08]  They were welcoming us.
[00:23:09]  As it turned out, that whole scene was a scam.
[00:23:12]  It was set up by intelligence officials from the American government.
[00:23:16]  It was largely pulled down by American soldiers on orders from the American intelligence.
[00:23:20]  Very few Iraqis participated.
[00:23:22]  And we know, of course, that it was the opposite of representative of Iraqi sentiment about our presence there.
[00:23:28]  But the kind of propaganda that was spread at the time is illustrated by a lot of things, including this article in the Yale Daily News, the official newspaper of Yale.
[00:23:38]  This is from April 9th, 2003.
[00:23:41]  The headline, as Saddam's statue topples, a sense of overwhelming relief.
[00:23:46]  He was writing, the name of the author is Marcus Alexander.
[00:23:49]  He was writing from Oxford, England, and he said this: quote, Iraqi writer Gassan Attaya was moved to tears in a London studio as BBC broadcasts live scenes of Iraqis with Americans pulling down Saddam's statute in Baghdad's central fair to square.
[00:24:04]  Quote, I thought I would never leave to see his demise, Atiyah said against the background of Iraqi men, dragging the head of Saddam's medal statute along the streets of Baghdad.
[00:24:12]  Quote, I really hope that Iraqis see this on television.
[00:24:18]  Does it not occur to people?
[00:24:20]  I really, the people falling for this, that perhaps Iraqis who live in London and Toronto and New York were not representative of the views of the people who actually live in Iraq, or that these Iranian monarchists and the diaspora who were told all support this, who live in Miami and New York and London and the like in Europe, that maybe they're not representative of the voices there.
[00:24:49]  There was a famous Iraqi exile, Ahmad Shalabi, who was paraded around every outlet of the media in 2002, 2003.
[00:24:57]  And he was presented as the voice of Iraqis.
[00:25:00]  And he promised that neocons wanted to make him the leader of Iraq, even though he had no base of support there and hadn't been there for decades, no one knew who he was.
[00:25:06]  That, oh no, I'm Iraqi and I'm here to say they're going to be grateful.
[00:25:10]  That's so they that's what they do.
[00:25:12]  That's a strategy.
[00:25:12]  They find these random, individualized people in the diaspora and they're like on social media, they're always like, hey, Iraqi here.
[00:25:20]  I'm here to tell you, blah, blah, blah.
[00:25:22]  Iranian here.
[00:25:23]  I'm here to tell you that we love it and we want it more.
[00:25:25]  And they're always invariably in the West.
[00:25:27]  They obviously don't speak for anyone.
[00:25:29]  Same with Venezuela.
[00:25:30]  Venezuelan here.
[00:25:31]  I'm here to.
[00:25:32]  And so this tactic is so transparent and yet it's very effective because it's kind of like a bullying tactic.
[00:25:38]  Like, oh, you're against the war in this country that the people in that country want.
[00:25:42]  Who are you to deny them their freedom and democracy?
[00:25:44]  And of course, there's no evidence at all presented of what the people in those countries wanted, except from prior wars.
[00:25:49]  When we see that even if they do hate their government, they don't want American soldiers in their country.
[00:25:53]  They don't want to be blown up.
[00:25:54]  They don't want the foreign, they don't want foreign powers choosing and selecting their government for them.
[00:26:00]  Here is a protest in New York against the American-Israeli war in Iran that was attended by Iranians in the diaspora, including many of them who spoke as Iranians who were opposed to this war.
[00:26:16]  Here's the local affiliate in New York reporting on this.
[00:26:22]  His family was forced to flee Iran to the United States.
[00:26:26]  While he understands the need for regime change, he says war is not the answer.
[00:26:32]  When they bomb elementary schools, killing 85 schoolgirls, that doesn't bring freedom and democracy.
[00:26:37]  The protesters then took over the West Side, spilling into the streets and shutting down traffic.
[00:26:42]  Shopper 2 over the scene as they made their way to Columbus Circle, hoping their disruption sends out the message that they will not stay silent in the time of war.
[00:26:52]  They should focus on taking care of people who are in need in the United States and in other places and not in creating yet another.
[00:26:59]  All right, now I'm not saying that that Iranian exile, his family was driven out of Iran by the current government, has represented the Iranian people when he says we don't want war, you know, bombing us and bombing Iranians is not liberating them.
[00:27:10]  But clearly there are those voices if you don't deliberately exclude them, like of course, Jake Tapper would.
[00:27:16]  But even people who live outside of Iran in the West are not representative of Iranians in that country.
[00:27:27]  You can try and find out by just putting a bunch of Iranians on, even trying to do some polling in that country, which would be very difficult in time of war in a country that isn't free.
[00:27:43]  But the worst way, in fact, the counterproductive way is to put Israelis on television to explain what Iranians feel about Israeli bombing of their country and how much they love it.
[00:27:54]  Because not only is it meaningless and uninformative as anecdote, it's worse than that.
[00:27:59]  It's overt propaganda.
[00:28:01]  It's lies.
[00:28:01]  It's lies deliberately designed to manipulate public opinion in support of a war in the Middle East, something that we have seen so many times before that I do actually feel surprised that they haven't even bothered to change the script, even slightly to appear differently.
[00:28:16]  I've talked about this before.
[00:28:18]  And I think we're actually seeing polls showing that Americans are not falling for it this time.
[00:28:23]  Public support for this new war is lower than any new war in many decades.
[00:28:29]  And support for these wars only declines as the wars go on.
[00:28:33]  But Americans have lived through enough of these to realize that they're being lied to, that they're being tricked and deceived and manipulated, that the threat, the problem, the cause of the problem in their lives that they care about are not Iranians or the Aitolla or Putin or the Kremlin.
[00:28:46]  People are seeing through that propaganda.
[00:28:50]  But the Jake Tappers of the world will continue to give it their best effort to make sure that Americans are deceived because they want to make sure their priorities and the foreign country they hold most sacred is What is served and not the interests of the American citizens to whom they're purporting Report.